Max Headroom: The Complete Series (1987) Review

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(More customer reviews)They had this at my local DVD Planet a week early so I picked it up.... I enjoyed this show on its first run, and I do like science fiction. To answer many of the speculations...it doesn't look that great. Most shows in the 70s were shot on FILM but alas the 80's brought on the video age and these shows that were shot that way suffer greatly when they come out on DVD...which seems to accentuate their soft, poor color saturation and poor contrast...which make most of them barely watchable for me. I had just watched an episode of Mannix (from the late 60's) on DVD before sticking the Max DVD in and it was like night and day..sadly.
Many have asked if "20 minutes into the future" is included...it is NOT.
the 5th DVD is a bonus disc which contains..
1) an hour making of ....featuring the behind the scenes/camera/creative folks
2) Looking back at the Future...a 35 minute "round table"discussion with a some of the cast members , Tambor, Pays,Tomei, and Chris Young...(NO Frewer)
3)The big Time Blanks...Tomei and Morgan Sheppard chatting for 12minutes
4)the science behind the fiction...one of the creators discussing the science of the show 12 minutes
5)The writers remember....11 minute interview with a couple of the writers
6)Brian Frankish discusses "producing" the show...8 minutes
I usually enjoy watching the behind the scenes on most DVD sets....these were pretty tedious and seemed inflated....of course they could not resist playing with graphics , sound and textures to try and make them appear videoish from the old 34......
but I can't imagine watching any of these features...ever again.
its curious that the star of the show was absent these 2hours of extras and even more interesting that SHOUT factory says on the back cover "members of the cast" are in the bonus content instead of listing them so that folks would assume that the star would be involved?
None of the coke commercials are included
Not using the art of noise music video
Not included: the telefilm "20 Minutes into the future"
Not included any of the other Max Headroom clips from Muppets to the interview show on Cinemax.
If you are a big fan of the show you have the 14 episodes from "Blipvirts" to "Baby Grobags" most likely as good as they ever looked.. and for those of you crying about the lack of a Blu Ray release...I'd say WHY? this is cheap video....and boy does it look it ....Blu Ray would only make it look cheaper.
All that said...I liked and still do ...some of the ideas presented and some of the characters. I do feel that SHOUT has put a pretty high price on essentially a 4 DVD set....and have deducted my stars for the lacking bonus features and for the heavyweight price...not a great value for money in my humble opinion...at $29 its a 5 star set....and the lack of more creative extra features or even the star of the shows participation understood...but at 50 bucks....I expect more.

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Television networks battle one another in an unrelenting ratings war. Whoever controls the airwaves controls the dystopic world in which they broadcast. So when Network 23s star reporter, Edison Carter, uncovers a deadly secret that could shake up the dominion the station has over its viewers, the only option is to eliminate Carter before he can make his story public. After his “accident," his mind is uploaded to create the world’s first self-aware, computer-generated TV host: Max Headroom! But will Max bow to his creators? Or will he be the key to his human alter ago bringing down a network superpower? Able to boast his own international talk show, music videos, countless endorsements and merchandising, the puckish Max Headroom became more than just a character on television. He was a decade-defining icon, never better represented than in this sardonically witty, adventurous look at society and the place of media within it. Now all 14 uncut episodes — starring Matt Frewer (Watchmen), Amanda Pays (The Flash), Jeffrey Tambor (Arrested Development) and Morgan Sheppard (Star Trek) — are finally available together in one long-awaited DVD collection!

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Alice (2009 Miniseries) (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)There's a girl in a blue dress, a Queen of Hearts, and a a magical looking glass that whisks the heroine into a surreal Wonderland.
But beyond that, don't expect this SyFy miniseries to have much in common with Lewis Carroll's classic novel, "Alice in Wonderland." Instead, "Alice" is a whole different animal -- a deliciously gritty sci-fi adventure filled with action, romance, monsters psychedelic horrors, and a revolution against a drug-peddling queen. It's a little silly, but still immensely entertaining.
Alice's (Caterina Scorsone) dinner date with her boyfriend Jack (Philip Winchester) falls apart when he offers her an heirloom ring. When she chases after him, she sees him being dragged off by some suit-wearing thugs -- and promptly trips THROUGH a looking glass. Of course she ends up in Wonderland, a world of grimy urban ruins and art deco casinos. And it's ruled by the Queen of Hearts (Kathy Bates), a ruthless tyrant who keeps her populace drugged with emotions from kidnapped "oysters" (ordinary humans).
Alice ends up following the eccentric Hatter (Andrew-Lee Potts), who offers to take her to the Resistance -- but when they get there, they discover that Jack's ring is actually the Stone of Wonderland (which powers the transdimensional Looking Glass). Since everybody in Wonderland wants the Stone, Hatter and Alice end up on the run from both the Resistance and the Queen's assassin Mad March. Alice is still determined to rescue Jack and return home, but she soon finds that her boyfriend isn't quite what she thought -- and that one of her loved ones is the Queen's brainwashed slave.
The whole idea behind "Alice" is that Carroll's story was real, and that Wonderland has become a very different place in the last 150 years -- crumbling smoky cities, insectile airships, bunny-headed cyborg assassins, and a pair of sadistic interrogators called Dr. Dum and Dr. Dee. It's a far darker, more complex affair than Carroll's books, and that's what makes it so brilliant.
There's plenty of sci-fi action and chaotic battle scenes, including aerial chases, bombing runs and the occasional attack from the grotesque Jabberwock; and the writers keep the complex plot flowing along nicely. But they also keep the story grounded with a love triangle between Alice, Jack and Hatter, as well as Alice's quest to free the oysters and a long-lost family member. And there's just enough humor to keep it from being excessively grim ("We don't have to use a user manual, do we? I HATE user manuals").
Problems? A few of the homages (the grinning cat, the "drink me" bottle) are pretty superfluous, and the siege of skeletal soldiers is kind of silly (especially the "Hit them with everything we've got").
Scorsone makes an excellent modern Alice -- intelligent, capable and capable of butt-kicking her way out, but still vulnerable and young ("You don't remember me!"). Potts makes a deliciously quirky, sexily disheveled Hatter, and Frewer rounds out the main trio as a mildly insane White Knight. Winchester and Colm Meaney are also excellent, Tim Curry is brilliant but underused, and Kathy Bates absolutely rules as the casually cruel, petulant Queen. And yes, she does say "off with his head!"
I don't know what beloved children's story will get reworked next, but "Alice" does a great job with Lewis Carroll's classic novel -- lots of action, a touch of romance, and just enough surreality.

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Abandoned by her father as a child, the independent twenty-one-year-old Alice is accustomed to men being unpredictable, but Jack Chase is something else. Just moments after surprising her with a rare family ring, he’s suddenly kidnapped by two thugs and driven into darkness. It is then that Alice is confronted by a sharply dressed stranger who calls himself White Rabbit, and who promises to know more about Jack than she. Where Alice follows him is through the liquid glass of an ornate mirror. Where she lands is Wonderland, an outlandish underground city of twisted towers and parapets, staircases conceived in a Dali dream, and an otherworldly purple horizon. Soon, the word’s out that Wonderland has its most prized captive. It seems Alice has the ring that controls the looking glass—the key to the power of the Queen of Hearts. It was mad folly for her son Jack to give it to a girl he barely knew. But Jack had his reasons. Discovering them is up to Alice.

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